


Terminus

by WyldMagic



Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: AU where the gate of finis has more emotional impact on the characters, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Major Character Injury, ship content present but Not The Focus, spoilers for literally everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-09-19 08:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20328067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WyldMagic/pseuds/WyldMagic
Summary: A variant on the Gate of Finis, or, your worst enemy is inside your head.////HIATUS////





	1. Venom

“Mornin’, Ma!” Tressa said. “Mornin’, Pa!”

“Good mornin’, seashell,” said Ma, setting down her mug of tea on the table and standing to give her daughter a warm hug. Sunlight streamed through the open window. “You’re up awful early, eh?”

“I have to be!” Tressa said. “A merchant doesn’t sleep past a good deal, now do they?”

“Hah! No, they do not,” Pa said from the front counter. He winked at Tressa with a bit of extra enthusiasm. Tressa rolled her eyes.

The family room was just as she remembered—driftwood nailed to the walls, framed oil painting of the Caves of Maiya above the couch, lantern hanging from the ceiling and that tell-tale scent of saltwater and fresh linen. Tressa disentangled herself from her Ma’s bear hug and set her hands on her hips with a satisfied huff.

“You’re going to see Ali?” Ma asked.

“You bet!” Tressa said. “He’s only in town for half a day, and I’m not about to pass up the chance to egg on my one and only rival!”

Ma and Pa shared a significant look between them, and Tressa felt herself blush. She snatched her hat off the rack by the door and tugged hard on the brim. Pa chuckled behind her. Tressa did her best to ignore him and shouldered her pack—faltering momentarily under the weight. What the heck did she put in here, rocks?

Something heavy bumped against her leg. Tressa stuck her hand in her skirt pocket and pulled out a worn leather journal.

She cocked her head, studying the cover.

_ What is this?_ she wondered. _It looks… almost familiar._

She squinted, bringing the notebook closer to her face to get a better read on it, but when she blinked the book was gone and her pockets were full of seashells.

Tressa stood still in the front room of her parent’s house and felt a cold, deep pit form in the center of her chest.

“Have a good day, seahorse!” Ma called from the counter. When had she gotten there? She’d been on the couch… and Pa had somehow switched places with her. Tressa blinked, and now both of them were behind the counter.

“Be home by dinnertime, you hear?” Ma said. “I’m making your favorite clam bake!”

“Sure thing, Ma,” Tressa said with a forced smile. Something was wrong. But the instant Tressa tried to pinpoint what it was, her head rang with pain, and she rubbed her temples trying to clear it—

—and was standing on the cobbled streets of Victor’s Hollow.

“You alright there, Tressa?” Ali said next to her. He put a hand on her shoulder; the gold bracelets on his wrist glimmered like scales under water. “You didn’t forget about our date, right?”

“D—right, yeah, totally,” Tressa said.

_ Of course, that’s right,_ she thought, _Ali and I were going to the arena to see the Twin Blades of Hornburg with Noa. I can’t believe I forgot!_

Tressa laughed and tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind one ear. For a moment, her fingers brushed metal, but when she tugged on her earlobe she felt nothing but unbroken skin. No piercings. Why had she thought she had pierced ears?

Her pack was heavy. Ali offered to carry it for her, but Tressa refused.

“I have something important in there,” she said, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was.

“Suit yourself,” Ali said. “Noa’s waiting for us inside. She saved the best seats in the house!”

“A coliseum isn’t a _house_, Ali, it’s… it’s a big round thing without a proper roof!”

“It’s a figure of speech!”

Tressa playfully shoved him in the shoulder; Ali nudged her back, and the two devolved into laughter as the arena suddenly loomed much closer in their field of view. Tressa lingered for a moment in its shadow. She pulled out a skystone from her skirt pocket and stared at its shining green surface.

“The rich take and the poor deliver—that’s how it’s always been, girl.”

Tressa jumped; Morlock was standing behind her, staring up at the arena with an impassive gaze. His hands were decorated with pyrite rings, and a skystone glimmered in a brooch on his doublet.

“…When did you get there?” Tressa asked carefully.

“I’ve owned these cliffs for decades,” Morlock said with a self-righteous lilt to his tone. “I’m not about to let some whelp from the Coastlands tear apart my business for the sake of ‘moral justice’!”

“I… I already did, though,” Tressa said. She furrowed her brow, memory aching behind her eyes. That’s right, she _had_—she’d been in Quarrycrest with Ali, and Cyrus and Olberic—

_ Cyrus. Olberic. I was traveling with them. Where are they?_

Morlock tossed her a worn leather notebook. Tressa scrambled to catch it but fell over backwards from the weight in her pack—she landed with an _oof!_ on the hard stone. Cheers erupted from the arena behind her.

A hand reached down to help her up.

“You need to be careful,” said Leon Bastralle, looking every bit the pirate captain he’d used to be in a long half-cape and tricorner hat. “Tressa, you can’t afford to make mistakes like this.”

“Yeah yeah,” Tressa said, brushing off her skirts. “You don’t need to lecture me like I’m some little girl, you know. I’m eighteen and I know how to take care of myself.”

“Clearly,” Leon snorted. Tressa shoved him lightly on the arm. “Look,” Leon continued, “Baltazar and I have a race we must get to, but you chose this as your treasure, so you must keep it safe. Do not let it fall into the wrong hands.”

He handed her the notebook. Tressa held it with both hands and struggled to keep it above her waist—the paper was so heavy, it was like iron balls had been shackled to her fingertips. The leather was scratched and black and frayed to peeling along the edges.

Her skirt pockets sagged with skystones. Overhead, a seagull cried among the pine trees.

That pit in her chest widened, and Tressa dropped the notebook with a pained gasp. It disappeared into the sands, and when Tressa whirled around she found herself on the beaches of Grandport, sun beating down hard across her face.

_ This isn’t right,_ she thought, but even her thoughts began to race as she struggled to breathe. The air here was humid and thick. Her tradewinds spear fell loose from its buckler on her back and sank into the sand. Tressa frantically dug it out and clung to it like a rope off a ship, her lifeline, the weapon that had saved her life and earned her the title Runelord.

Tressa grit her teeth and dug the spear butt into the sand. Salt wind whirled around her. Her hat blew away in the breeze, but when she blinked again it was back on her head, and her skirts had changed into that beautiful blue dress Balogar had gifted her with silver embroidery and a headband topped with silver wings.

“Oh, there you are, Tressa!”

Noa waved at her from the top of the steps that led down to the beach. Her blonde hair was the wind’s plaything, the sapphires on her neck the jewels of the sea. She made her way down step by step until she stood before Tressa with her beautiful doe eyes.

“I was so worried, you see,” she said. “When you didn’t show up at the auction.”

“What?”

“The auction my father hosts… the one you entered the eldrite in.” Noa tilted her head. “You don’t remember?”

“No, no, that isn’t right,” Tressa said. “I didn’t enter the eldrite in the auction. I entered this.”

She reached down and pulled the worn leather notebook from the sands beneath her feet. It was feather-light and fragile, and Tressa’s hand shook as she held it out for Noa to see.

“Oh, that’s right, Crossford’s journal,” Noa said. “Awfully dull, don’t you think?”

Tressa breathed in sharply through her nose and took a step back. With her head held high, she gripped the notebook tightly in her hand and said, “All right, I’m ready to wake up now, universe! There’s no way the Noa Wyndham I know would turn her nose up at a tale of adventure, so come on out and quit messing with my head!”

The breeze stilled. Noa shook her head sadly. One instant she was on the beach, and the next she was a different blonde woman, someone tall dressed in black from head to toe.

The Obsidian held out her hand with her fingernails curled up like a birdian’s talons.

“Give me the notebook, girl,” she said.

Tressa took a step back. Seashells crunched under her boots.

More Obsidians emerged from the sea, their robes drenched with brine. Tressa leveled her spear at the woman in front of her and clung tightly to the notebook with the other hand.

“This is my treasure,” Tressa said, struggling to keep her voice steady as the air became thick around her. “I wrote my journey alongside a stranger’s in here, and then I gave it to someone new so she could write _her_ journey in it, too. I don’t know who you are, but I remember I gave you quite a lickin’ the last time you crossed me, so—so you’d better turn around and, ah, and go back where you came from, you jerk!”

The woman shook her head slowly, clucking her tongue.

“I tried to be reasonable,” she said. The Obsidians surrounded them. Gray stone walls from the sewers under Grandport dripped with moisture and blocked out the sun; Tressa shivered. The last time she was down here, she’d been with Ophilia and Cyrus, Olberic on their heels, as they confronted this woman and her gang of black-clad conspirators.

But her friends weren’t here now. Tressa was alone.

Her chest seized, and she licked her dry lips hoping for some gust of wind to bring her respite, but the sewers were sealed and it was just her, just her and this evil woman who wanted Graham Crossford, Graham Crossford—

The tiger pounced.

Tressa almost didn’t dodge in time. She saw it leap out of the shadows between the trees and rolled to the side; its thick fur brushed against her bare skin. Grandport was gone, and in its place was the wild forest outside Victor’s Hollow, the trees grown tightly together and the branches swarming with seagulls. Sand sank under Tressa’s boots and quickly sprung back as stunted grass.

The tiger snarled, fur rippling gray and sickly purple. The raised claws on its front paws were slick with secreted poison. Tressa stepped back and leveled her tradewinds spear.

“Listen, I remember you,” she said, “and I don’t reckon you remember me, but you’re gonna be in for a world of hurt if you think you can bully me twice. I’m not after some stupid eldrite this time.”

“Then what are you after?” the tiger purred. It lashed its whiplike tail and swiped at Tressa with one huge paw; Tressa knocked it away with her spear and slashed open its paw pad.

“I—I’m after my _friends_,” Tressa said. “Because something is wrong, and I have this big bad feeling in my chest that they’re somewhere and they’re hurt and maybe it’s because of me, and I can’t just wander around my own memories forever hoping they’ll turn up!”

“You’re correct,” the tiger said. It leaned back onto its haunches and licked its wound, blood running off its sandpaper tongue. It eyed her with deep golden eyes. “They _are_ hurt, and it _is_ because of you.”

“Well, hearin’ it from a talking tiger doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“It’s not supposed to.”

The tiger lunged at her again, but Tressa was ready, and with a quick prayer to Balogar she sidestepped out of the way and stabbed her spear into the tiger’s flank. A beat later, a plume of flame shot along the shaft and scorched a huge singe mark across the tiger’s lower back.

The tiger roared and lashed its whip tail across Tressa’s shoulders. She winced—the mark wasn’t deep, nothing she couldn’t handle, but already she could feel that venom seep under her skin.

_ I don’t have anyone to back me up, here,_ she thought. The pit in her chest made her breath seize. _So I gotta be fast and put this thing out of its misery a second time before I turn into a walking corpse over here._

She planted her feet and spun her spear in a wide arc, whipping up a gale that she shot into the tiger as it lunged for her once more. The gust slammed the tiger in the chest and forced it back against the tree line. When it got to its feet, blood stained its fur where the wind had cut into its skin.

“Crossford was a fool,” the tiger snarled. “And you a bigger one than he.”

“Why is everyone so _obsessed_ with him?” Tressa said. “Yeah, he saved Alfyn’s life as a kid, and he wrote this notebook—half of it, anyway—but I don’t see what that has to do with those creepy Obsidians or why they want this book so badly.”

The tiger shook its head and smiled at her, exposing those daggerlike fangs dripping with poison and saliva.

“Then I do not see what business you had coming to the Gate,” it said.

“I came to save Kit,” Tressa growled. “And because Prim still owes me fifty leaves on a loan. Not to talk back and forth with an animal that, by all bits and logics, shouldn’t be able to speak in the first place!”

The venomtooth tiger whipped its tail and kneaded the ground with its huge paws. Overhead, the sky darkened with the telltale signs of a storm.

The tiger roared. It leapt for Tressa with one paw extended, but she rolled away underneath it and scored another slash along its belly. A bolt of flame shot down the length of the spear from her fire rune and burned the animal deep in its skin.

The tiger fell onto its side, writhing in pain. Tressa ran towards its head to finish it off, but as she went in for the final blow the tiger slashed her across her leg with that wicked raised claw.

She screamed, but she refused to falter. Before the tiger could pull itself up for another attack, Tressa pushed herself up and slammed her spear tip into its neck. The last of Balogar’s blessing scorched the tiger’s gods-cursed body and burned it away in a cloud of black smoke and indigo ash.

The woods were still. Thunder rolled overhead. One by one, the seagulls who’d crowded the pine trees began to take wing and circle the grove.

Tressa folded her wounded leg underneath her and pressed a hand against it to try and feebly staunch the bleeding, but within seconds her fingers were sticky and red. The claw had cut her tendon. She couldn’t run, could barely stand without a wave of nausea rolling through her. The venom turned her limbs to lead and her thoughts to haze.

_ I have to find a way out of here…_

She tried to push herself to her feet again, but only made it two steps before her wounded leg crumpled underneath her. Tressa forced herself onto her elbows. Her breath caught in her throat.

The notebook, Graham Crossford’s notebook, had fallen open onto its spine in front of her. A sharp, salty wind began to billow through the forest, but the pages were preternaturally still, unruffled as the wind picked up into a gale. Shaking, Tressa read the page:

_ DEATH. DOOM. DESTRUCTION._

_ DEATH. DOOM. DESTRUCTION._

_ DEATH. DOOM. DESTRUCTION._

Somewhere in the forest, a door creaked open on an age-worn hinge.

The dirt Tressa knelt on sagged as it melted into wet sand. Tressa yelped and yanked her hands free, but her legs were stuck fast, and her bangs were plastered to her forehead as heavy rain suddenly pelted down from the sky. The seagulls shrieked and dived around her; Tressa tugged and tugged on her legs but the sand had spread across the grove and sprouted shells and tufts of seagrass.

“I am _not_ dying here,” Tressa said even as her skin grew clammy with fever. A venomtooth tiger was a nasty beast. They were big enough to not need poison as a weapon, but any animal caught by its claws had minutes to live if they were lucky. Tressa wiped the rain from her eyes.

The ocean rushed in. Water splintered the pines like twigs and rushed over Tressa so fast she couldn’t snatch a breath before she was underwater. Air bubbles escaped her throat.

A heavy branch dislodged by the ocean slammed into her chest, and she woke up.

\---

Tressa banged her head against a red stone column hard enough to blur the edges of her vision. She gasped in pain and clutched the floor with trembling fingers; her leg oozed blood and her shoulders stung where the whip tail had caught her. She took a deep, shaky breath and wanted to weep.

_ How is this… where is this… _

_ How is this possible?_

Tressa stifled her thoughts with a whimper. It was so hard to think straight. The air was thick here but not with humidity—something dark and evil had made its home past the Gate, and it sought to choke out any vestiges of life that dared open the seal.

Ophilia lay unconscious a few feet away on the other side of the stone column. Her golden Starseer’s dress had a rip along the skirts that Tressa definitely remembered hadn’t been there when they’d come to Hornburg. Trembling, Tressa prodded Ophilia in the ribs.

“Phili… Phili, wake up,” she said. “We made a mistake. We gotta get Kit and get out of here…”

Ophilia didn’t stir. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse fluttered—she was alive, at least—but she was lost to her own ill dreams.

The chamber was the size of a cathedral and shaped sickeningly like one, too—high ceiling lost to shadow, blue flames in their own carved bowls, even a pulpit where a priest might give a sermon. All of Tressa’s traveling companions were strewn about the floor like dolls discarded from a child’s playtime: all of them curled unconscious halfway through some motion. H’aanit with her hand on Primrose’s shoulder. Therion clinging to Alfyn’s mantle. Olberic, their sworn knight, resting with his sword half-drawn from its scabbard; Cyrus, a book lying where it had fallen from his hands as he tried a protective spell. Ophilia resting with her hands clasped in prayer.

And Tressa. Awake in hell.

As she took it all in, a flickering light caught her attention from the flames that were lit in an arc behind the pulpit. Eight perfect flames in eight perfect bowls.

One flame turned black.

Tressa covered her mouth to keep from screaming. Her chest was tight with panic.

This was real.

This was horribly, horribly real, and there was nothing she could do about it. Not without her friends. And with everyone else scattered around her and trapped in their own heads, Tressa was alone in this deep, cursed cathedral with only the company of her wounds and repressed fears.

She clutched her head in her hands, careful not to stab herself on the silver Runelord wings, and rocked back and forth. She shut her eyes and blocked out as much of this terrible waking nightmare as she could. Her leg burned. Her head pounded. Her blood dripped down her ankle onto the cold stone floor.

“Wake up,” she whispered in a tight strained voice. “Wake up, wake up, wake up…”

The Gate of Finis rumbled.

The reunion was near.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first time writing serious 8path fic, taking some big creative liberties but enjoy


	2. Mercy

H’aanit leaned down and scratched Linde between the ears. Her snow leopard purred and butted her head against H’aanit’s leg, rubbing her cheek and teeth against H’aanit’s boot.

“What, thou hast decided my boots shall be thine new chew toy?” H’aanit asked. “I am sorry to disappoint, Linde, but I need these to shelter my feet from thorns and brambles.”

“Rawr,” Linde grumbled. She flicked her tail and bumped her head one last time against H’aanit’s shin before she headed deeper down the trail.

The two were in the midst of a great deciduous forest, following a beast whose tracks befuddled H’aanit every time she looked at them. First they had four-toed paws, then three talons like a bird, then nothing but the winding sweep of a serpent—but no matter what they looked like, they led deeper into the woods, deeper into the shadowed glens that held monsters and fierce wild animals. H’aanit couldn’t quite remember why she and Linde were here—or what they were tracking in the first place—but it made little difference, as they were here now and pressing forward the same as any old hunt.

A crow lighted on the branches of a nearby maple tree and cawed hoarsely at them. H’aanit gave it no mind.

“Foul carrion,” she muttered. Primrose would have shot the bird dead with a bolt of shadow magic on sight.

H’aanit stopped short.

Primrose. Where was Primrose?

She cast her eyes around the glade, but her dear companion was nowhere to be found. More crows gathered in the branches of the nearby trees, peering down at her with beady black eyes. H’aanit rubbed the back of her neck. The hairs there stood on end like a wolf’s hackles.

“Rawr,” Linde agreed.

“Thank thee for thine frankness, friend,” H’aanit said. “I thought Primrose was venturing with us, but she may have returned to the inn—shall we turn round as well?”

“Rawr.”

H’aanit nodded. It was unlike her to concede a hunt, but now that she’d remembered Primrose, another scrap of memory tugged at the back of her head like a fishing line, driving her to retrace her steps out of the woods.

She risked a glance to the trees and tensed her fingers tighter around her bow—crows filled the branches and gave each tree a dark canopy of black leaves.

Linde flicked her tail over the dead leaves along the trail. H’aanit pet her along the shoulders.

“The end is near and we are the prey,” Linde said.

H’aanit froze. Eyes wide, she looked Linde over, but the snow leopard licked her paw and ran it over her head like nothing strange had even happened.

“…What did thou sayeth, friend?”

“Rawr.”

“Ah. That is… to be expected,” H’aanit said. She hesitantly scratched Linde behind the ears, unable to shake the tingling sense of unease between her shoulders. All of a sudden, these familiar woods seemed strange and wild, and whenever H’aanit turned to look into the distance, it was as if the trees themselves rearranged their trunks to give the semblance of a proper background.

“Do not lose sight of your quarry,” Z’aanta said from behind her.

H’aanit whirled around. She blinked, and the dense woods were replaced with thick snow and pines weighed down with ice—the peaks of the Frostlands mountains loomed like teeth out of the horizon. Linde was nowhere to be seen. Hagen, Z’aanta’s wolf, was beside H’aanit instead, licking snowflakes off of his scarred muzzle.

Z’aanta was a statue. His skin, his furs, even his eyes had turned to thick unyielding granite, but he snapped his fingers and beckoned Hagen to his side as if his stone was flesh. Snowflakes caught in the notches in the carved clothes along his shoulders.

“I have not forgotten,” H’aanit said warily, eying her master. “I must free thee from Redeye’s curse.”

Z’aanta nodded.

“Crossford is the key,” he said. “The son followeth the path of his father. Thou cannot saveth both.”

“Kit?” H’aanit asked. What business did Kit have out here? She’d found the boy months ago in the Woodlands, searching for his father, and then again halfway to Goldshore. She, Primrose, Tressa, and the rest of their company found him a lapis to repay the Impresario.

The rest of their company. Where in Draefendi’s name were they?

_ We were—we were traveling together,_ H’aanit tried to remember through the fog that had descended on her mind, _we had recovered a dragonstone to returneth it to Bolderfall, Ophilia was performing the Kindling, Cyrus had foundeth a tome—_

A violent wind whipped up from the south and billowed over the snow. Snowflakes stung H’aanit’s cheeks and blinded her in their fury. Z’aanta disappeared. H’aanit shivered, screwing her eyes shut against the sudden gale—

—and opened them in the pine woods outside Stillsnow. Linde had returned to her side as if she’d never left, and H’aanit kept one hand upon the snow leopard’s back as a reminder that yes, she was here, she was real, and somehow that anchor tethered her against the nagging feeling that something terrible was afoot.

She stood in a clearing filled with tufts of sharp bladed grass. The Frostlands dragon landed before her, ice cracking off its scales and crumbling to the ground like the earth’s crust in a quake. It shook its diamond-shaped wings and peered down its narrow snout at H’aanit and Linde. Hot breath streamed from its nostrils.

“What bringeth thee to the Whitewood?” it asked.

“I seek the herb-of-grace to fend off the demon, Redeye,” H’aanit said. All other concerns had left her mind blank save for the fleeting impression of wrongness.

“Thou will not destroy him once thou knowest his nature,” the dragon sneered. “He is noble in his intentions despite the thrall upon him. Thou humans clingeth to thine morals as if they will saveth you from oblivion.”

H’aanit furrowed her brow. Beside her, Linde growled low in her throat, and a flurry of songbirds too southern for these snow-filled climates whipped into the sky crying out in fear. H’aanit tried not to look at the patches of snow in her peripheral vision—she could have sworn they were melting, but each time she darted her eyes to make sure the snow seemingly doubled in size.

_ Do not lose sight of thine objective,_ she thought. She shook her head.

“I shall smite the beast,” she said firmly. “Of that, I assure you. Redeye hath rampaged too long across Orsterra.”

The dragon scoffed. It reared back its head and blew a plume of fire at her, but H’aanit rolled out of the way, kicking up snow as she drew her axe from her belt and buried it in the dragon’s side. It screamed, beating its wings, but H’aanit pulled the weapon free and hacked into it again, spilling its steaming blood over the snow.

H’aanit pulled back, readying her next strike—

—but the hot desert sun made her eyes water, and she held up a hand to shield them.

Her red Warmaster’s dress flapped against her legs in the arid breeze. On her back, her spears clattered in their holster against her other weapons. Somewhere behind her, she knew Olberic and Erhardt were fending off waves of lizardmen who’d come to harass Marsalim; their twin blades sang a song of death across the sands.

H’aanit shouldered her quiver and marched on.

The Grimsand Ruins swallowed her whole and muffled her footsteps in their stone embrace. Linde was a ghost beside her, ears pricked for any disturbance other than the faint drift of sand grains through cracks in the ceiling. H’aanit lifted the lantern that had appeared in her hand and scanned the catacombs.

_ Our quarry is here,_ she thought as they descended a grand ruined staircase. Flecks of quartz glittered in the sandstone along the walls.

Linde growled her assent. Together, the two hunters padded deeper through the ruins.

In a matter of seconds—or minutes warped by unstable perception—H’aanit found herself upon a landing carved with patterns in a concentric spiral. The walls shifted whenever she looked away. In one instant, Linde was beside her, then Hagen, then one of the wild birdians she’d tamed on the way here. The apparition settled on Linde and growled at the oncoming darkness.

A black beast crashed through the ceiling and sent stone tumbling in its wake; H’aanit suppressed a cough in her throat at the cloud of dust that rose to greet her. She drew her bow and nocked an arrow, ready to fire the moment the demon gave her a critical opening.

Redeye fixed her with a hungry, hollow gaze and roared.

H’aanit pulled the bowstring taut and centered her aim between the demon’s eyes. A bit of latent thunder magic crackled along the obsidian arrowhead, and H’aanit took one slow, steadying breath the way Z’aanta had trained her to take before every kill.

Redeye bared its sickeningly human teeth at her in a facsimile of a smile. It set a misshapen hand down on a pile of loose stone.

“I am a man,” it pleaded, voice distorted like it was speaking through the depths of a river. “I am a man!”

H’aanit held her bowstring steady despite an unsettling shiver crawling up her spine. The arrow wavered in her grip. This wasn’t right. Redeye was a demon, a mindless beast that turned the living to stone, but this creature before her had the uncanny look of intelligence behind those bloodred eyes. Its skin glistened like oil.

H’aanit gritted her teeth.

“Thou art a villain,” she said. “I have cometh to finally smite thee and bringeth peace to those thou hast wounded and left disabled.”

“I am a _man_!” the demon insisted.

Its hand closed around the rubble, and in a movement almost too fast to track it threw the stones against the far wall, sending a cascade of dust and sand to the floor. H’aanit shielded her mouth and nose with her arm, and in that lapse of motion Redeye swiped at her with spindly fingers and knocked her aside. H’aanit hit the rough stone and sprang back to her feet, ignoring the scrape along her upper arm. Linde charged the demon and snapped at its ankles, hoping to hamstring it, but Redeye kicked her aside as easily as kicking a pebble.

H’aanit fired three arrows as fast as she could reload, each sinking into Redeye’s sickly flesh. It bled black over the stones. H’aanit reached into her quiver for another arrow but fumbled, dropping it onto the floor; she bent to retrieve it and whipped her bow up to compensate for those few precious seconds.

Her muscles seized.

Before her stood a man.

He had the disheveled look of someone far from home, his dirty blonde hair like Alfyn’s after a poor night’s sleep, a ragged short beard clinging like moss to his chin. His eyes were bloodshot and red from weeping. He staggered towards her, one hand raised in greeting.

“Please,” he said hoarsely. “Please, I only wish to make amends. The witch will have your souls, too, if you linger. Please, please let me save my boy…”

H’aanit tugged the bowstring taut, the brush of her arrow’s fletching soft against her cheek. A hunt for a human is a mercenary’s job. Prey did not talk back. That was what made hunting easier to stomach for those weak of will—no chance to reason with an animal, no chance for it to talk you out of the killing blow.

Her legs were stiff; she didn’t need to look to know that granite had frozen her to her knees.

“Who art thou?” she asked.

“I am a man,” he said.

“That, I can see. Giveth me thine name.”

The stranger convulsed, doubling over with a shout of pain, and his skin turned slick and black and for a moment his shadow reared up as the demon Redeye before shrinking into his skin. The stranger shook with every step. He came closer.

H’aanit’s legs were pillars. She licked her lips, but her throat had gone dry.

“Save me,” the stranger said.

The bow and arrow felt like lead in H’aanit’s hands. The ruins faded, and shadows crowded her vision. H’aanit’s chest tightened as her pulse beat too fast in her ears.

“Shall thee giveth him mercy?” said the shadows.

“I—”

“The Gate of Finis leaveth no room for wavering convictions. Those that enter never returneth to the lives they abandoned. Thou must face the consequence of thine choices.”

Linde yowled from the darkness. The stranger before her flickered between a human and a monster, man and beast, but those hollow red eyes remained the same. H’aanit swallowed.

“I am sorry,” she whispered.

She let the arrow fly.

\---

H’aanit came to with the faintest impression of tears at the corners of her eyes. She rubbed her face with the back of her hand and sat up.

The grand stone chamber swarmed with shadows. Eight torches burned in sconces around a pulpit, bright blue and black, sparks fading as soon as they’d crackled to life. The lack of sunlight or any sort of natural life made the place stifling and dry like a long-abandoned ruin.

Her right arm ached; checking it, H’aanit frowned at the rough scrape over her pale skin. It was a superficial wound—nothing to merit worry—but the fact that it had appeared _through_ the dream was a cause for concern. H’aanit pushed herself to her feet.

Tressa was curled in a shaking huddle against one of the nearby pillars with a nasty gash on her leg that looked in sore need of tending. H’aanit placed a gentle kiss on Primrose’s knuckles—the dancer slept on, face troubled and tense—and made her way to Tressa, treading softly so as not to startle the girl.

Tressa didn’t react until H’aanit had wrapped her leg in frayed linen. Her breath caught in a hitch, and Tressa grasped one of H’aanit’s hands tightly as if afraid she’d disappear.

“H’aanit, oh, H’aanit, thank the gods you’re awake,” Tressa said, voice tight with nervous energy. “I don’t know what to do; I can’t remember what happened to us, but Phili’s out cold, and so is everyone else, and I had the most _awful_ dream—”

“Shh, calm thyself, Tressa,” H’aanit said. “I promise thee we shall make sense of it. What has wounded you?”

Shakily, Tressa recounted her fight with the venomtooth tiger, skipping awkwardly over the parts that made no sense even to her subconscious. H’aanit took it in with a stoic face.

“‘Tis well and good the venomtooth beast was within the dream,” H’aanit said, “for your wound does not appear infected. Whatever force attacked you, it did not carry more than physical harm.”

“But how did it hurt me in the first place? Or you, for that matter?”

“I do not know. But we shall find answers. For now, let us proceed with caution and not make rash decisions.”

For a moment, the urge to describe her own strange dream came unbidden to H’aanit’s tongue, but she swallowed it down. Tressa was in enough distress as it was. Giving her one more supernatural stressor might just break the poor girl.

A furry bundle suddenly sprinted out of the shadows and rubbed its head against H’aanit’s back, nearly shoving her forward into Tressa. With a little laugh, H’aanit scratched Linde under the chin, relishing that vibrating purr.

“Linde, what has thou found?” H’aanit asked.

“Rawr,” Linde said.

“She must have been scared, too,” Tressa said. “Having her best friend collapse like that without any warning. Maybe she went looking for help?”

“No help existeth in this cursed place,” H’aanit said. She narrowed her eyes at the looming darkness, still wary of the scenery changing when it thought she wasn’t looking. As far as she could tell, this place stayed whole, but the air was thick and tasted vaguely like smoke.

“What are we gonna do?” Tressa said. “I tried shaking Phili awake, but she won’t react.”

“Linde, guard our companions,” H’aanit ordered. “Watcheth over them for signs of stirring. Tressa and I shall confer here.”

Linde butted her head against H’aanit’s shoulder and trotted off to fulfill her duty. The big cat went first to Primrose, sniffing her hair and licking her cheek, but only lay down beside her for half a minute before getting up and planting herself between Alfyn and Therion, tail swishing over the two of them. Another minute later, she stood and paced to Cyrus, then Olberic, moving in a restless circle. She never stayed with one person for too long; rather, Linde shared her watchful eyes and reassuring purrs with everyone in turn.

H’aanit took Tressa’s shaking hand and enclosed it in her own steady ones, letting the girl squeeze tight.

“We shall findeth a solution,” H’aanit promised, forcing her words to sound reassuring. “Whatever magic has descended upon our party, it cannot hold us forever.”

Two of the flames burned black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> h'aanit's speech patterns are hell
> 
> everyone needs a therapy Linde


	3. Hubris

Cyrus Albright sat at his desk with a quill pen, fingers stained with ink, writing idle lists on a fresh sheet of parchment paper. The grand office on the second floor of Atlasdam’s Royal Academy spared no expense—a tapestry hung behind the desk depicting the Flatlands with real gold thread, the curtains were pure velvet embroidered with filigree, and the desk itself was made from thick solid cherry wood and polished until it shone.

_ What a shame,_ Cyrus thought. _So much effort into something so ephemeral._

“Pardon me, Headmaster?” came a voice at the door.

Cyrus looked up long enough to take in his assistant, Lucia, before turning back to his work.

“Yes, Lucia?”

“I have a delivery for you from Princess Mary. She said it was secret and not to be opened by anyone but yourself.”

“Ah, splendid. You may leave it on the chair there.”

_ Wait for her to act,_ Cyrus thought, watching Lucia’s movements from his peripheral vision.

Lucia fidgeted. There was a brief flash of gold, and her robes suddenly looked more intricately embroidered than they had a second ago. She set something flat and wrapped in shimmery paper on the seat of a plush chair, and, a moment later, it turned from pale pink to light blue. Lucia folded her hands behind her back. Her heeled boots changed to simple flats.

Cyrus continued to write. The words changed shape when he took his eyes off them.

“I will take my leave, then, Headmaster Albright,” Lucia said, edging towards the door. “Do consider a stroll around Atlasdam before it gets dark; the weather is awfully pleasant today.”

“I will do no such thing.”

Lucia froze. “…Whyever not?” she asked.

“Because I suspect,” Cyrus said, rolling out a kink in his shoulder, “that the moment I step outside the boundaries of this room, the environment will change, and I will have to relocate my senses before I find myself completely and utterly lost within the confines of my own head. Therion once told me my ego was the size of the continent. Awfully large place to be stuck in.”

“That is a… wild conclusion, Headmaster.”

“Of course it is. Dreams are never as logical as they first appear. All it takes is an eye to spot the cracks before the whole business crumbles.”

Lucia licked her lips. “What, ah, makes you so certain?”

“Well, aside from having no recollection on how I arrived here, there is the fact that I am sitting at the Headmaster’s desk despite having never applied for the position—not to mention Yvon himself is dead from tampering with those awful blood crystals—the fact that no matter how many times I dip my quill, the ink pot never empties, or it may possibly be the fact that you’ve changed your outfit twice in the span of a blink in an effort to blend in with this constructed narrative.”

He looked up. A lock of black hair fell across his eyes.

“Does that logic suffice, ‘Lucia’?” he asked.

Lucia crossed her arms. At once her scholarly robes were replaced with a worn cloak over a rich amethyst dress. The faint smell of pine needles and musty books flowed through the office.

“Alephan gave you too much intelligence by half,” she said.

“I prefer to consider it a blessing,” Cyrus replied smoothly. He set the quill aside and stood, letting his black-and-gold scholar’s robes cascade behind him. _Even the ink is gone from my hands. How curious._

His boots crunched over a carpet of old, brown pine needles and fallen leaves. The office floor was flooded with them. Outside the window, the blurry image of Atlasdam wavered like a heat mirage. Cyrus clucked his tongue.

“Now, as loathe as I am to admit it,” he said, “I’m afraid I _have_ encountered some gaps in my Alephan-blessed brain. It would be most courteous of you, Lucia, to explain what exactly is causing this dream so I may exit it and return to my companions. Normally I’m able to snap from a lucid dream the moment I realize where I am, but some curious force is preventing me. Hm.”

“You realize this is futile, correct?” Lucia shook her head. “You and your ‘companions’ wandered into the Gate out of your own free will. The only thing that lives here is Death.”

“Ah, humor me for a while!” Cyrus insisted. “One scholar to another! Tell me, you cannot be the _real_ Lucia, for H’aanit and myself vanquished her in the Ruins of Eld hardly a fortnight ago. Who are you, really? A product of delirium? A figment of my imagination, as it will?”

He leaned against the front of the Headmaster’s desk and crossed his legs at the ankles. His smile could have charmed anyone in the Academy.

Lucia snapped her fingers. Gideon, bedraggled and hollow-eyed, suddenly appeared beside her, the sickle in his hand rusted and red with blood.

“Just a few more souls,” he said, a hitch of laughter to his voice. “A bit more blood for a bit more stone, then the Quarry will fall and not one will atone!”

Cyrus barely batted an eye.

“This does nothing for you?” Lucia asked.

“Ah, Gideon, what a troubled soul he was,” Cyrus said the same way he’d comment on a particularly lackluster tea blend. “Misguided by that wretched tome. Fortunate to have that abridged copy on him at the scene of the crime, in any case, otherwise my investigation would have taken far too long at far too great a cost. He would have made a fine research assistant if he’d applied himself to the right fields.”

Lucia snapped her fingers again. Gideon disappeared. Yvon strode forward in his place, eyes narrow, lips upturned in a beast-like snarl. Red light pulsed in the veins around his neck.

“You are too bright for your own good, Cyrus,” Yvon rumbled.

“I’ve heard that quite a bit, yes.”

“You could have had everything! All you had to do was keep your nose out of other peoples’ business, or put aside your damn pride and join us, but of course you had to prove you were the superior scholar. Lyblac was a lying scoundrel, but with the power over life and death in my hands—in _our_ hands—we could have ruled Orsterra and rivaled the gods!”

As he approached, Yvon’s body rippled and grew until he was a hulking giant in gray skin and bright red veins, muscles taut and cloth in tatters, the product of overambition and lack of foresight. He raised his meaty hand into a fist high enough to graze his knuckles against the ceiling.

Cyrus didn’t move.

“It even replicated his transformation!” Cyrus muttered. “Stunning degree of accuracy, too; that shade of gray is almost like moving stonework, and of course there are shards of the blood crystal…”

Yvon swung his arm down, fist centered on Cyrus’s head.

The giant disappeared.

Lucia sighed into her hands.

“This is infuriating!” she said, tugging at her hair. “I thought the Dark God would trap you here and make you play pretend until your body withered away, but even in the face of past mistakes and danger and people whom by all rights you should feel _sorry_ for, all you think about is _thinking_ about things! ‘My, how strange this is!’ ‘Goodness, what kind of spell must be at work here?’ It’s like you don’t care about anyone but yourself—”

A bolt of lightning struck the far wall an inch away from Lucia’s head. Her dark hair was singed where the spell had caught it.

Cyrus lowered his hand. The dark red and violet swirl of his sorcerer’s robes fell around his legs as he uncrossed his ankles. His eyes were a storm. Latent sparks of thunder magic crackled off his fingertips.

“Do not mistake me,” he said lowly. “The fact that I am nonchalant about facing my past demons does not mean I do not care for them. Killing Gideon was a shame. Killing Yvon was a shame. Killing you, dear Lucia, was a shame, for none of you realized how far astray your hubris had led you. Knowledge is not a commodity to hoard and sell. I deeply regret not being able to reach you three in time to convince you of that. Now, the next apparition you attempt to summon will face the full wrath of Dreisang’s training, and I will wake up to resume the rescue of one Kit Crossford.”

Cyrus let out a level sigh through his nose. He folded his hands neatly in front of him.

“But I am patient, and were I to leave now, I would lose any chance at gaining an advantage through which to help my companions in the waking world. So, I ask again: humor me with a conversation.”

Lucia ran her fingers over the burnt part of her hair and scowled.

“I could kill you right now,” she said.

“As could I.”

“Fine. You get three questions.”

“Who are you?”

Lucia rolled her eyes and began to pace the far end of the office, kicking up dead leaves and pine needles in her wake. Weathered granite stones appeared beneath the leaf litter. Outside, Atlasdam’s brilliant profile began to fade into the woods outside Duskbarrow. Thick storm clouds gathered in the sky.

“I am the Dark God, but I am also your deepest fears. I am your traveler’s log of mistakes and fallen opportunities. I am dark magic, and I am here to wound you so you never again see the light of day.”

Cyrus tapped idly on the desk behind him. “Elaborate metaphors aside,” he said, “the Dark God—Galdera—was banished to the far reaches of hell. It has no direct power, but I suppose that by entering the Gate of Finis we enabled it to enter our subconscious. I assume Lyblac is attempting to break the seal and resurrect Galdera, any by doing so, this spell we are under will only grow in strength. Most intriguing. Now, then: how do I destroy Galdera?”

Lucia shrugged.

“You _did_ give me three questions.”

“Yes, but I didn’t say I would answer them all,” Lucia replied with a sneer. “The Dark God is beyond your strength. It would be a waste of time to pit yourself against him.”

“I see,” Cyrus said. “How do I lift the spell on my companions?”

“You can’t. They have to kill their demons themselves.”

“Thank you most kindly,” Cyrus said, standing to readjust his collar. Thunder rumbled in the clouds outside. “I would say our time together was pleasant, but I am not apt to lie so openly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must take my leave.”

“You can’t just—”

Lucia’s words cut off as a plume of brilliant fire engulfed the office. Cyrus walked out the door, backlit by magic, and woke up.

\---

Cyrus rubbed the side of his head as he sat up and immediately bumped foreheads with a snow leopard.

“Rawr,” said Linde.

“A good afternoon to you as well,” Cyrus said. He let Linde lick his hand with her sandpaper tongue just to verify he was alive before he pushed himself to his feet. The only evidence he’d been under was a faint headache running around his skull like a band of cloth knotted too tightly. His skin felt warm, but after a few seconds goosebumps appeared along his arms as the ambient temperature of the Gate of Finis caught up to him.

Across the floor, Tressa was sitting against one of the pillars, nervously running her fingers over the silver Runelord’s wings on her crown. H’aanit crouched beside her. Their voices were faint even at such close a distance; it was like listening through the floorboards into a basement.

_ Atmospheric disturbance,_ Cyrus noted. _And I do believe there are Old Hornburgian script lines carved into some of these stones. Ah, how foolish of me to have left my logbook behind at camp! What a publication this would make!_

“Cyrus? Is that you?” came Tressa’s voice.

Cyrus strode towards them, making a mental note about the three black flames among the blue.

“My friends,” he announced, voice echoing theatrically in the dark chamber, “I believe I have procured some answers!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cyrus is so fun to write
> 
> cool kids don't look at explosions


End file.
